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Grayson Perry

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“The artist’s inspiration for the series was Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, the tale of a young man who squanders his inherited fortune and dies in a madhouse. The six tapestries chart the ‘class journey’ made by young Tim Rakewell and include many of the characters, incidents and objects Grayson Perry encountered on journeys through Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and The Cotswolds for the television series ‘All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry’.

He said of the works: ‘The tapestries tell the story of class mobility, for I think nothing has as strong an influence on our aesthetic taste as the social class in which we grow up. I am interested in the politics of consumerism and the history of popular design, but for this project I focus on the emotional investment we make in the things we choose to live with, wear, eat, read or drive. Class and taste run deep in our character – we care. This emotional charge is what draws me to a subject.'”

“The Vanity of Small Differences is a series of six tapestries, measuring 2m x 4m each, by the Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry. These tapestries tell the story of class mobility and the influence social class has on our aesthetic taste.

Inspired by William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, the six tapestries chart the “class journey” made by young Tim Rakewell and include many of the characters, incidents and objects that Grayson Perry encountered on journeys through Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and The Cotswolds for the television series ‘All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry’.

The television programmes were first aired on Channel 4 in June 2012. In the series Perry goes “on a safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain”, to gather inspiration for his artwork, literally weaving the characters he meets into a narrative, with an attention to the minutiae of contemporary taste every bit as acute as that in Hogarth’s 18th century paintings.

Manchester Art Gallery is only the second gallery outside London to be showing Grayson Perry’s The Vanity of Small Differences”

I’m intrigued of using embroidery as a media document the story of Okunoshima via a set of tapestries. It seems like an interesting format to try and display the drastic change in environment that has happened in the Islands history.